A reader asks: Why is Linux still not as user friendly as the two other main OSes with all the people developing for Linux? Is it because it is mainly developed by geeks?
My initial feeling when reading this question was that it was kind of a throwaway, kind of a slam in disguise as a genuine question. But the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I felt. There truly are a large amount of resources being dedicated to the development of Linux and its operating system halo (DEs, drivers, apps, etc). Some of these resources are from large companies (IBM, Red Hat, Novell). Why isn't Linux more user-friendly? Is this an inherent limitation with open source software?

So it sounds like Firefox needs Gnome to work properly on Linux, which explains why the users find it a pain to use.

Actually, no. I use KDE, and what the previous user stated regarding Gnome holds true for KDE. If an application is registered as the default in KDE, Firefox picks up on it. Firefox from Mozilla lacks integration with KDE file dialogs, but integrates nicely with all other KDE styles and MIME types.

I guess this underscores the problems with usability in Linux. We need to use FF, but it does not work easily with our desktop, and retraining people to use Gnome is out of the question. Too bad Konqueror does not work better on the sites users have to access.

It sounds like the issue is with the relatively old version of Red Hat Linux that you are using (and that KDE is something of an afterthought with Red Hat). For the record, I am using Firefox 3.5 and KDE 3.5.10. I would also add that Konqueror works pretty well for me, but that Firefox with extensions is a better browser.

"So it sounds like Firefox needs Gnome to work properly on Linux, which explains why the users find it a pain to use.

Actually, no. I use KDE, and what the previous user stated regarding Gnome holds true for KDE. If an application is registered as the default in KDE, Firefox picks up on it. Firefox from Mozilla lacks integration with KDE file dialogs, but integrates nicely with all other KDE styles and MIME types.
"

Unfortunately, Firefox does have some Gnome-based dependencies (at least on FreeBSD). If you're trying to make a system from scratch, clean of packages from the Gnome and KDE stacks, you'll want to avoid FF 3.5.x, since it'll drag in stuff like gnomehier and gconf2. FF 2 doesn't have this problem, but still uses GTK. Of course, most people could care less about this.